The disclosures herein relate to an apparatus for processing items of electronic equipment, especially but not exclusively to downloading software onto and testing a personal computer (PC) system unit.
The final stages of the manufacture of a personal computer (PC) with pre-loaded software require the software to be downloaded onto the PC system unit and for the PC system unit to be extensively tested. To this end, a number of PC system units are placed in individual docking stations (herein referred to as cells) in a so-called xe2x80x9cburn rackxe2x80x9d. The cells are connected via a network to one or more servers and software is downloaded from the servers to the client system units and tested via the network.
In build-to-order (BTO) operations individual PC system units are built to the customer""s hardware and software specifications from a range of available options. In such a case each system unit may occupy the rack for a different length of time, according to the amount of software to be downloaded and the tests required to be performed. One of the biggest challenges to BTO operations is to optimize the burn rack traffic, by reducing the time units spend in the burn rack, which in turn enhances the success of the BTO model to deliver a better quality service with respect to time and cost per unit.
The task is non-trivial and indeed represents the core of a high capacity, high velocity manufacturing process, as high speed manufacturing is required in order to cope with the desired high volume production (400-800 PC/h per line).
Therefore, what is needed is a burn rack which can facilitate such optimization.
One embodiment, accordingly, provides an apparatus for processing items of electronic equipment. The apparatus includes a rack having at least one location for accommodating a respective item to be processed. The location has a visible indication of the instantaneous processing state of that location.
A principal advantage of this embodiment is that the dwell time over one hour of production in one factory can be substantially reduced, as will be explained further.